Directionally correct advice for confused rationalist, but many of the specific claims are so imprecise or confused as to make many people more confused than enlightened.
Goodness is not an egregore.More sensible pointer would be something like Memetic values. Actually different egregores push for different values, often contradictory.
What happens on a more mechanistic level: - when memes want people to do stuff, they can do two somewhat different things: 1) try to manipulate some existing part of implicit reward function 2) manipulate the world model - often the path via 2) is easier; sometimes the hijack/rewrite is so blunt it’s almost funny: for example there is a certain set of memes claiming you will get to mate with large number of virgin females with beautiful eyes if you serve the memeplex (caveat is you get this impressive boost to reproductive fitness only in the afterlife) -- notice in this case basically no concept of goodness is needed / invoked, the structure rests on innate genetic evolutionary values, and change in world model - another thing which the memes can try to do is also to replace some S1 model / feeling with a meme-based S2 version, such us the yumminess-predictor box with some explicit verbal model (you like helping people? give to GiveWell recommended charities) -- this is often something done by rationalists and EAs —S2 Goodness is part of this, but non-central
Memetic values actually are important part of human values—at least my reflectively endorsed values. Large part of memetic values is human-aligned at the level of groups of humans (ie makes groups of humans function better, cooperate, trust each other, …) or at the level of weird deals across time (ie your example other aspects of Goodness seem rather suspiciously optimized for getting kids to be easier for their parents and teachers to manage—think following rules or respecting one’s elders—could be a bargain: is if the kid is hard and expensive to manage and does not repsect the parent, and all of that would be known to the prospective parent, the parent could also decide to not bring the kid into existence).
Also The Yumminess You Feel is often of cultural evolutionary, ie, influenced by memetics. Humans are basically domesticated by cultural evolution; if you wonder whether selective evolutionary pressure can change someting like values or sense of yumminess, look at dogs. We are more domesticated than dogs. The selection pressures over many generations are different than current culture, but if after reading the text, someone starts listening to their yumminess feel and believes he is now driven by Actual, Non-memetic Human values, they are deeply confused.
Directionally correct advice for confused rationalist, but many of the specific claims are so imprecise or confused as to make many people more confused than enlightened.
Goodness is not an egregore. More sensible pointer would be something like Memetic values. Actually different egregores push for different values, often contradictory.
What happens on a more mechanistic level:
- when memes want people to do stuff, they can do two somewhat different things: 1) try to manipulate some existing part of implicit reward function 2) manipulate the world model
- often the path via 2) is easier; sometimes the hijack/rewrite is so blunt it’s almost funny: for example there is a certain set of memes claiming you will get to mate with large number of virgin females with beautiful eyes if you serve the memeplex (caveat is you get this impressive boost to reproductive fitness only in the afterlife)
-- notice in this case basically no concept of goodness is needed / invoked, the structure rests on innate genetic evolutionary values, and change in world model
- another thing which the memes can try to do is also to replace some S1 model / feeling with a meme-based S2 version, such us the yumminess-predictor box with some explicit verbal model (you like helping people? give to GiveWell recommended charities)
-- this is often something done by rationalists and EAs
—S2 Goodness is part of this, but non-central
Memetic values actually are important part of human values—at least my reflectively endorsed values. Large part of memetic values is human-aligned at the level of groups of humans (ie makes groups of humans function better, cooperate, trust each other, …) or at the level of weird deals across time (ie your example other aspects of Goodness seem rather suspiciously optimized for getting kids to be easier for their parents and teachers to manage—think following rules or respecting one’s elders—could be a bargain: is if the kid is hard and expensive to manage and does not repsect the parent, and all of that would be known to the prospective parent, the parent could also decide to not bring the kid into existence).
Also The Yumminess You Feel is often of cultural evolutionary, ie, influenced by memetics. Humans are basically domesticated by cultural evolution; if you wonder whether selective evolutionary pressure can change someting like values or sense of yumminess, look at dogs. We are more domesticated than dogs. The selection pressures over many generations are different than current culture, but if after reading the text, someone starts listening to their yumminess feel and believes he is now driven by Actual, Non-memetic Human values, they are deeply confused.